Daily Dose: Firefox Drops Version Numbers

Re Firefox dropping version number display:

This would mean removing the last "easy" reliable way of knowing whether Firefox is up to date. At least on Windows 7 (and Vista), I have yet to see a firefox installation that 

a) Automatically updates itself

or

b) at least tells me that it's up to date or not up to date (some versions ago this worked for the very first time, it detected that it was out of date, in the current version even this is broken)

and

c) after it has detected that an update could be downloaded and the update was applied it (in versions where this worked at least), it will not constantly offer the option to install that update that has just been downloaded (even if the current version is a lot newer than the update that had been downloaded) - of course accepting the option of applying the update does not work at all but just restarts the browser.

 Note that most of the above will only happen in the "rare" case where you are not running with administrator rights. As I said, since I guess firefox 3.0 everything related to autoupdate on Windows is broken.

Dear Firefox developers (and Thunderbird developers for which all of the above applies as well): Feel free to remove the version number display, but *first* make auto update actually work. 

Sorry for the rant but I find the current situation ridiculous for a software that claims be more secure than others however does not have the ability to update automatically to the most recent and most secure versions. The last time I checked the PCs of my coworkers only one out of ten PCs had an up to date Firefox version, some of the installations where more than 10 security releases behind! Also if you know of a way to make autoupdate or at least notification work on Windows, please post here.

 I think that thanks for the valuabe information and insights you have so provided here.
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